MUSIC >Turk soprano wins prestigious award

Turkish soprano Pervin Çakar, who has been performing in Italy for the past seven years, has been honored with a prestigious musical award, the French Académie du Disque Lyrique’s Orphée d’Or (Golden Orfeo).

The award will be presented to Çakar on May 14 at a ceremony to be held at Paris Opera Bastille. She will take her award from academy presidents Pierre Bergé and Stéphane Blet.

Born in a village in the eastern province of Mardin, Çakar began to be interested in music at age 14 when she joined a folk song competition.

Çakar told Anatolia news agency that entering the Diyarbakır Fine Arts School was a significant turning point in her life. “It was a miracle for me to enter this school. My father began to read books on opera history to find out what kind of profession I chose.”

She said she still sang public music and that it was very important for her. “I had to choose between folk music and opera. Even though opera is foreign to us, I always think that my experience in folk music reflects in the arias that I currently perform.”

Çakar said she was only discovered while studying at the Ankara State Opera and Ballet by an Italian opera manager who came to Turkey in 2004 to discover new voices. She passed the exam of an opera academy in Italy and moved to the country.

Çakar said she had won many awards in international competitions including the first prize and the New York Lotte Lehmann Foundation Special Awards at the 28th International Maria Caniglia Opera Competition last year.

She also won runner-up awards in 2010 at the fourth Magda Olivero Opera Competition in Milan and the Marie Kraja Opera Festival in Tirana, as well as the third award at the sixth Leyla Gencer Opera Competition. She has also appeared on stage at the Teatro Civico de La Spezia and A. Bonci di Cesena theaters.